It’s 2024 and India still doesn’t have its indigenous alcohol! Don’t get us wrong, India is blessed with a variety of drinks and flavors that change every 50 km.
And we are equally experimentative when it comes to getting high (literally).
We are blessed with local booze as much as we are with local food. For eg:
🍷🇮🇳 1. Lugdi from Himachal
🍷🇮🇳2. Kesar Kasturi from Rajasthan
🍷🇮🇳3. Arak from Ladakh
🍷🇮🇳4. Toddy from Andhra Pradesh
🍷🇮🇳5. Feni from Goa
But India still doesn’t have its global alcoholic product like other countries in the world. For another eg:
🍷🇫🇷 1. Champagne from France
🍷🏴 2. Scotch from Scotland
🍷🇺🇸 3. Wines from California
These global alcohols have geographical indicator tags from their respective countries. So why do we have so much to offer in alcohol and still haven’t crafted something Indian on a global level?
The answer is- SOURCING!
📍1. Most alcohols are fermented & distilled and have a standardized process of manufacturing. So the differentiation comes from the base ingredient used to make the alcohol. So there is the prevalence of local ingredients used to make local drinks.
📍2. Let’s take Feni – Goa is blessed with cashew and coconut given its coastal inclination and locals have found it way to make alcohol out of cashew – and Feni was born.
📍3. Goa has almost 4000 distillers who manufacture 70% of Feni drink for home consumption and the rest for markets.
📍4. While whiskeys and beers dominate the Indian alcohol market – new-age concepts like RTD (Wine-In-A-Can, Seltzer, New-Aged Beers, Indian Crafted Gins, Rums, and Single Malts) are emerging.
📍5. Also, most of the local drinks are treated as substandard. Their quality is weak for driving mass consumption and hence they could never build an aspirational quotient nationally.
But…..
>> Goenchi Feni who recently appeared on Shark Tank India is trying to do this – capitalize on the opportunity of the lack of an Indian national drink & get Indians drunk on something common to everyone.
We loved the branding. It is artisanal and aspirational and the brand is doing everything to serve the palate of all Indians.
They even cracked a deal with Deepinder Goyal whose sole reason behind investing in this brand was to establish a global alcohol brand for India.
Let’s see if this 500-year-old Indian alcohol makes it to the top!